Greedy Goblin

Saturday, September 3, 2016

... and Reddit delivers justice

Lenny released a trailer of the video that is designed to show CCP how important he is and how the playerbase is behind his RMT site that is - together with corrupted devs allowing it - literally killing EVE.

That piece of crap should have picked a different media. Because Reddit has the same strength and weakness: the voice of the people. While it's often an uneducated and even a toxic voice, it's also a honest one that can't be swayed by paid opinion leaders. No matter how many FCs and alliance leaders (and sadly artists I once respected) are on Lenny's payroll, the people remember the truth. All the top level comments are negative:

And my favorite:

Go read them! They all say "this was boring and fast and without real battles". Why? Because Goons were done years ago. I kept telling everyone caring to listen that their killboard data is outright horrible and mostly ratting losses, while their ratting data is out of the roof. But no one attacked them because of "reasons". Then I paid highsec mercs and evicted their highsec POCOs without them putting up any fight (RvB did some for them). Then I supported a little NPC dwelling alliance Mordus Angels, they quickly became #1 Goon killer and took systems of them in 2015 August. All the Mighty Imperium Who Already Won EVETM could answer is siccing their dog CCP Falcon on me. But people finally saw how weak they are and dogpiled on them. When their fate was sealed (around December-January) IWI started to throw money on everyone because they saw the opportunity to claim a name. Then all the same people who avoided attacking Goons for "reasons" jumped on them and Goons were evicted without a fight.

This is the ultimate problem of IWI. If they masterminded a great war, then there must have been a great war. There wasn't. The masses of Reddit may don't understand politics, but they sure as hell remember orbiting buttons "contested" only by "Sword" crap. The truth is that no one masterminded nothing. Not IWI, not me. Goons lost because they slowly transformed into a huge "everyone invited" carebear nonsense with only one purpose: click ads on TMC. When anyone dared to show up with literally Cormorants and bombers, Mighty Imperium Who Already Won EVETM couldn't do anything. Their "winning EVE" was from corrupted deals with CCP devs and not from in-game strength. Falcon could protect them from other big alliances by telling leaders not to attack them, but couldn't do anything of simple roamers, gankers, "NPC trash" who were naively playing the game instead of the metagame and then "accidently the Imperium".

I did overvalue my contribution and it didn't help. While my results clearly shown that they are weak, it doesn't mean I made them weak. While I helped Mordus and Marmite and these groups were crucial in showing how weak Goons are, they didn't and couldn't destroy Goons, simply because of the sheer size of them. A handful of wolves can't exterminate a whole herd of sheep. If there is anything that was really my doing it's standing up to that corrupted bully Falcon, proving that he isn't all-powerful, removing the weight of the behind-the-scene threats of Mittani and Sion. (Hint: my account is still not banned).

One more time: the IWI group want to canonize themselves to look irreplaceable content creators for CCP. In reality they are just a bunch of RMT criminals (illegal gambling, tax evasion) who literally kill the game with the corrupted devs on their payroll. Dear Reddit, if you want to save EVE, just downvote everything they do. I'm sure there are dissenting voices within CCP, show them how the players are not behind this RMT-er filth. Maybe these dissenters win and get the corrupted ones fired. With unbiased stewards who treat every player equally, EVE can rise again. That's a little hope, I admit, but why not try it?

I know a few people who buy plexes to fund their IWI gambling. I'm sure CCP have linked credit cards with in-game browser data, and seen how much $$ they bring in plex sales. The whole business is seedy in the extreme.

Why would ANYONE gamble on IWI? There are both professional (read, regulated, not-scamming) online casinos where you can win money and "casino games" where you can act like in an online casino without winning (and often spending) real money.

Why would anyone mix EVE into this and use an obviously rigged casino?

I'm sorry, but occam's razor says that "real" gambling in IWI is negligable and their money movement come and go from RMT buys and sells.

Player A has to much spacegold, and goes to the casino, knowing it's rigged, and places 1 million space gold in nr. 23. He loses, but, at the same time, gets X real dollars on his bank account. Player B has to much real dollars, and wires Y dollars to the owners of the casino. He then puts some space gold on nr. 13, wins, and gets 1 million space dollars. The casino's winning is the difference between X and Y.

If this is correct, what is the way people know about this casino? Via official EVE forums? There must be a trail between the casino and the bank accounts somewhere? Could you uncover this?

@Asphodel: yes, that's the overall scheme of "casinos". There is a trail, but banks won't give out information to a blogger, only to a judge. There is a lawsuit going on against casinos in CS:GO. When it will end and if the ruling is against the casino, I will press a similar charge against IWI.